Now that summer is officially over and the (alarmingly warm) days are getting shorter, there’s something particularly fitting about relaxing into the sofa for the night to watch a thrilling film.
Fantasy and horror movies are all well and good, but there’s something particularly attractive about jaw-dropping stories that are actually based on real-life. With so many brilliant options out there, here’s our pick of some of the best films based on real events.
All the President’s Men (1976)
Even if All the President’s Men wasn’t based on a true story, it would still be one of the best political thrillers out there. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are perfectly cast as Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the two young journalists whose investigative reporting was key to bringing the Watergate scandal to light. William Goldman’s screenplay is taut and director Alan J Pakula does an amazing job of keeping the film’s tempo throughout. It is based on the explosive 1974 book published by Woodward and Bernstein.
The King (2019)
In Australian filmmaker David Michôd’s historical drama, Timothée Chalamet stars as King Henry V. The film follows his unlikely accession to the throne and the subsequent decisions he makes in the run-up to, and the fallout of, the Battle of Agincourt – a battle that looms large in English history because of Henry’s unlikely victory over the French, though the odds were wildly stacked against them. The film, which has an exquisite score from Succession composer Nicholas Britell, picked up 12 AACTA Awards (Australia’s equivalent to the Oscars of the BAFTAs).
Munich (2005)
At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, eight members of a militant Palestinian group abducted and killed 11 Israeli Olympic athletes. Just a couple of months later, the Israeli government launched a secret retaliatory mission, Operation Wrath of God, to track down the kidnapping’s facilitators. In Steven Spielberg’s 2005 retelling of the story, Eric Bana stars as Avner Kaufman, the Mossad agent who leads the mission, and whose perspective the film follows. Munich was nominated for five Oscars, and also stars Daniel Craig, Geoffrey Rush, Mathieu Kassovitz (La Haine) and Hiam Abbass (Succession).
The Social Network (2010)
David Fincher, master of the hardcore thriller, turned his hand to retelling the real-life (surprisingly) nail-biting story of how Facebook came to be. The origin story could belong to any start-up: a couple of clever Harvard students stumble into making a rather good product, and they drop out of college to pursue its potential. But of course, Facebook – which today has 3 billion users – wasn’t just any product. In the now infamous story, tension between the founders reached breaking point as the social network website became increasingly popular and lucrative.
Into the Wild (2007)
Sean Penn directed this thoughtful and utterly devastating film, which was based on the true story of Chris McCandless, a man who attempted to live a nomadic life in the American wilderness in the Nineties, with tragic consequences. The film is somehow incredibly uplifting and life-affirming: despite Chris’ valiant attempts to find peace and meaning in nature’s solitude, it’s the human connections he has left behind that define the film.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
The Wolf of Wall Street is a wild ride: it’s the story of how an American stockbroker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes from penny stocks salesman to multi-millionaire in just a few years – the answer is through illegal means. Belfort’s electifying tale includes how he built a fortune, bought flashy cars, houses and helicopters, married a beautiful wife (played by Margot Robbie) and developed an expensive drug habit. It also includes inflating stock prices, secretly smuggling wodges of cash to Switzerland, trying to charter a boat to Monaco, and eluding the FBI. Incredibly, it’s all based on the 2007 memoir of the same name by trader Jordan Belfort.
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director for her 2008 film The Hurt Locker about an American bomb disposal unit in Iraq. But we prefer Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, and not only because it stars the fantastic Jessica Chastain as CIA analyst Maya Harris. The film retells the story of the American manhunt for Osama Bin Laden from Maya’s point of view, beginning with difficult-to-watch black site interrogations and ending in the nail-biting raid. The film picked up five Oscar nominations in 2013, winning Best Sound Editing and Chastain won a Best Actress Golden Globe for her role.
Erin Brockovich (2000)
Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich is based on the true story of an American legal clerk who took on major gas company Pacific Gas & Electric in the Nineties for contaminating the groundwater in Hinkley, California. The case, which began with Brockovich investigating a number of unexplained illnesses in the area, culminated in a major class-action lawsuit. Julia Roberts, who won an Oscar for playing Brockovich, plays the paralegal perfectly: Brockovich was undermined and underestimated at every turn, partly because she was a beautiful woman.
